Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott review – a lyrical, claustrophobic tale of Brooklyn

In Alcott’s novel an assortment of pre-gentrification Brooklynites support each other through good times and bad, occasionally defying credulity

Any readers who believe New York apartment dwellers are a surly, antisocial bunch who meet their neighbors only if the building catches fire will be cheered by the possibilities for love, sex and fellowship that flower inside the run-down Brooklyn brownstone that is the setting of Kathleen Alcott’s new novel, Infinite Home. In this lyrical, claustrophobic tale, neighbors not only become friends but assume the care of one another that their families refuse. They’ll even undertake cross-country quests in pursuit of long-lost daughters and long-cherished dreams – then again, anyone who has actually rented a Brooklyn apartment would probably do as much on behalf of a landlord who hasn’t raised the rent in 14 years.

The Brooklyn of magazine trend pieces – once modest borough turned marketing buzzword – rarely intrudes in any significant way in Infinite Home: nobody drinks kombucha or eats foraged microgreens at a hip new restaurant. Gentrification nevertheless laps at this island of scruffy, artistic semi-poverty, threatening the characters’ retreat from the modern world and drawing them closer as the tides rise higher. Having come to appreciate each other’s presence through the thin walls and floors, which “gave and received heavy-footed trips to the refrigerator and unsnoozed alarm clocks and the burst-and-whoosh of bath faucets and late-night infomercials in a reliable cycle”, their silent coexistence is forced into words as their landlady’s dementia advances.

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